


I'll Catch You

by HK44



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 19:25:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HK44/pseuds/HK44
Summary: “Next time I’ll catch you,” Dick promises. “I swear.”Damian’s eyes flutter shut. “You already did,” he mumbles. He’s asleep before Dick can ask what that means.





	I'll Catch You

Dick can handle jumping off the roof with nothing to catch him. He can handle swinging on the chandelier and throwing himself off to crash perfectly into Bruce’s side. He knows if he jumps from the top of the stairs to the floor below him, he’ll be fine.

The rules don’t apply to him. Flying is second nature.

It’s not for everyone else.

And Damian’s fingertips are brushing his, eyes growing wide behind his mask and he’s plummeting.

He’s plummeting.

And Dick’s heart stops.

* * *

 

Damian is fine.

A bruised shin and a broken arm and Dick is careful when he comes in, apologies babbling out until Damian’s eyes narrow and his voice huffs out a snapping, “Be quiet, Grayson.”

He looks over Damian’s wounds as he settles on the edge of his bed, trying to think. It should’ve been worse. The fall was far. The drop splattering.

How did he survive?

That query plundered around Dick’s mind as he squeezes Damian’s good hand and apologizes quickly once more. Damian is too far gone under medication to pay much attention to the words now.

“Next time I’ll catch you,” Dick promises. “I swear.”

Damian’s eyes flutter shut. “You already did,” he mumbles. He’s asleep before Dick can ask what that means.

* * *

 

In his dreams, he flies. He soars. The ground lays echoes below his feet and he twists in the sky with ease. The clouds are like they were when he was six and science wasn’t a thing to him yet. Soft like cotton candy. Pink and warm.

Sunkissed.

His mother reaches out for him. She smiles and calls out for him. Her Richard, her Robin. He grabs her hands but she falls anyway.

She becomes his father. Becomes Jason.

Becomes Damian.

_Sorry. We’re sorry._

They all hit the ground, a blur of faces.

_I’m sorry._

* * *

 

Why am I alive? Dick wonders that a lot.

He wonders it when a mugger shoots him at point blank and misses. He wonders it when he miscalculates a jump and still hits the edge of next roof over.

He wonders it when he settles down next to Tim, who’s wrist is done up in a cast from smashing it against a wall too hard by accident. Tim had frowned, didn’t remember what happened. Just that the air gusted around him, hit him hard and sent him flying into a wall right before the Joker could get a knife to his neck.

That Dick had jumped down, got the man between the legs and incapacitated with ease.

Neither one of them notes that it felt like too much ease.

And Dick keeps wondering how it was the Joker’s knife ended up feet away from him, when no one ever saw him drop.

–

It’s too many months later and Cass hits the edge of the building wrong. Her foot snaps back. She shoves Dick forward and tumbles off the edge.

He shouts for her and nearly died of a heart attack when she shudders up beside him, all creases of her suit pressed down flat.

_For you_ , a thousand voice breeze by in his ear.  _For you, our Robin._

* * *

 

Bruce tests him twice and then one more time for clarity. There is nothing in his genes, in his DNA that qualifies him as more than a just a normal human or anything other than a human. Just like always.

Jason throws out theories anyway. A demigod. An alien. Half an alien.

Duke laughs at all of them and when his laughter stops, he says, “I thought you guys knew?”

They turn.

Bruce gestures. Jason drinks. Dick waits.

Duke shifts uncomfortable and turns to Damian, who’s remained quiet the whole time, petting Alfred the cat and watching Dick.

Dick’s skin prickles.  _You already did._

“I thought you told them?” Duke mutters

Damian scowls. “I told  _you.”_ He squints, looks too much like his father and yet somehow so much like his mother. He squares his shoulders, levels his head. “They said you were favoured. When they caught me.”

Bruce frowns in that way he does when he’s caught off guard and doesn’t like it. When he doesn’t know something he wants to know, feels he  _should_  know. “When who caught you?”

Damian’s scowl deepens, an embarrassed darkened tinge to the tips of his ears. “The wind,” he mutters and goes back to stroking his cat.

Jason laughs, the sound jolting. It cuts off, too sudden, when a breeze shifts through the still Cave, cold and yet loving.

Freezing to grab their attention but soft, not wanting to harm.

_Our Flying Grayson,_ the voices whisper to all of them.

Dick nods.

Why not?

* * *

 

There has to be a reason, he thinks. Some god who thought he was a good chance to put stock in. Some diety who just liked the shape of his ass in his Nightwing suit.

A reason more plausible than nothing.

He stills in his kitchen after too long of a silence, after too long of his own thoughts screaming.

He stops thinking.

He asks.

“Why?” He closes his eyes. “Why me?”

_You belong to the skies,_   _Dick Grayson_ , the voices whisper.  _You are not like your kind._  The voices almost giggle.  _You fly._

“But-” He exhales sharply. “My parents. They flew.”

_They were taught_ , the voices argue.  _And we loved them for their risk but they are not like you. You were born in the air. You were made for the sky. You were made for us._

_We wished to save them._ The air curled around him warm, desperate. Sorry.  _But we failed._

Dick gripped the edge of his counter. “You’re not failing now though.”

_A hero is like a bird. They need their people. We have learned that. We are trying our best._

“Thank you,” he says because what else is there to say?

_You are welcome, Robin_.

* * *

 

When he was young, his father told him to never fear the fall. To never fear the gap, when he was suspended in air, touching nothing, with nothing coming to grab him, when it seemed like all that was left was dropping straight down, and Dick had happily responded that he was never afraid of falling.

That he could never fall.

He didn’t fear plummeting until they did. Didn’t worry about never being caught until they weren’t.

And then he was afraid. Afraid of hitting the ground. Those were his nightmares. Never the fall.

Always the hit.

He feared it until it happened. Until it happened and he was falling, the air rippling around him, cool, cold, familiar.

Then he stopped.

Because he was caught.

* * *

 

They test it out. Push him off small things. Push him off tall things. Throw things at him. Sharp weapons. Soft plush toys.

Falling out a chair doesn’t get him saved. Being shoved out of a tree by a green boot gets him dangling by his feet in midair, shocking a crowd of elderly women going to bingo.

Knives find themselves scattered far away from him. Bullets too. A box of tissues, however, lands squarely on his nose to Steph’s ever laughing amusement before she grabs a donut and tries with that.

And Dick doesn’t ask for any more than that.

And he talks to it. This mysterious force that for some reason adores him. 

For some reason considers him one of theirs.

He asks questions about the universe, about the world. Likes to know the good things. Likes to know the unanswered things.

He was always a curious person.

And it loves him. It answers everything. It settles around him. It saves him.

He asks if there are others who are favoured. It says yes. In the past there were, though he’s only one now. They flew too. They soared.

And they never wanted to.

They just did.

The ocean favours its own people. The earth. Fire. Light. Darkness. All of it.

Everything is alive. Somehow. In some way. And it all loves its own people. People who touched the skies without needing to be taught or forced. People who caressed the ocean, dreamed about it, loved it, even if it was no where near them.

People who beat the earth with their feet and gently touched flowers. People who knew how to control flames. Who never feared it.

The people who breathed in the light of day and understood it. The people who didn’t flee to the dark but were always relaxed into it.

They were all like him.

_Natural selections_ , the voices muse.  _Favoured._

He throws a piece of popcorn into the air and watches it suspend above him, his jaw clicked shut. Tim leans over and prods it. The piece shifts but moves back into place.

Waiting.

Dick grins and opens his mouth.

It falls.

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed writing this tbh. Something a little bit out of my comfort zone.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://happyk44.tumblr.com/post/170587643707/dick-can-handle-jumping-off-the-roof-with-nothing)||[Insta](http://instagram.com/hk44_art)


End file.
